A whistleblower managed to leak secret documents from a spy agency onto the internet – but they were branded “fake and gay” online.
Australian Department of Defence graduate Michael Scerba is facing charges for allegedly disclosing documents in 2012, after managing to download secret Defence Intelligence Organisation reports.
Mr Scerba allegedly attempted to upload the reports to notorious internet forum 4chan – but users were unconvinced the files were genuine, branding them “fake and gay”.
The anonymous post was titled “Julian Assange is my hero”, and said: “I release what I feel should be in the media: bombings, civilian deaths, actions of the ‘terrorists’ that just aren’t reported in the media.”
A follow-up post was made after the files were taken offline, after a former Defence Signals Directorate officer happened upon them and alerted the authorities.
The post says: “To my dismay I just got a bunch of ‘fake and gay’ remarks and the secret documents went 404 [website not found] about 4 comments and 1 hour later.”
Police tracked the IP address of the posts, leading them to Mr Scerba’s house, where they found a broken discared disk containing data from the agency.
.According to IBT, court records suggest that Mr Scerba could plead guilty on one charge in return for a plea deal.
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